There’s no question It’s been a rough NASCAR Cup rookie season for Shane van Gisbergen. In the first 15 races, he has just one top 10 finish (sixth at Circuit of the Americas), two other top 20 finishes, and everything else has been 20th or worse.
Advertisement
The former multi-season Australian Supercars champ is both looking forward to and dreading Sunday’s first-ever Cup race at Mexico City’s Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez road course.
It’s turning left and right that SVG shines the best. Don’t forget, in his first-ever Cup race nearly two years ago, he dominated en route to victory at the inaugural Chicago Street Race.
The New Zealand native comes into this weekend’s race in 33rd place — a massive 126 points behind the cutoff line to qualify for the start of the Cup playoffs coming up 11 races from now.
Frankly, there’s only one way Gisbergen can make the playoffs: win it and he’s in it. In other words, he has to win one of the next 11 races to get an automatic berth into the playoffs.
Sure, Mexico City and its nearly 2.675-mile twisting road course would be a perfect spot for Gisbergen to win, given that road courses were his strongest asset during his tenure in Australia.
“I do know that we will be competitive if we get everything right,” Gisbergen told the Sporting News. “It’s so hard to know what the car’s going to be like — it’s a different track, how it’s going to be affected by the altitude and the surface.”
But Gisbergen thrives on the kind of challenge that the Mexican track presents. Not only is there the first-time look at the track for every driver, he and the rest of the Cup and Xfinity drivers have to worry about the extremely thin air (Mexico City is more than 7,200 feet above sea level), which robs horsepower from normally aspirated engines.
Wait, What, Wet?
And then there’s the one thing that, ironically, Van Gisbergen can do without: R-A-I-N.
Sure, he won the Chicago street race in the wet stuff, and he’s known as a very good — better than most his peers — in rain.
Unfortunately, rain — and potentially very heavy rain at that — is in the forecast for Sunday afternoon’s race.
“I absolutely hate racing in the rain, but I’m good at it,” Gisbergen admitted. “I’d rather it didn’t rain but if it happens, we put the wets (rain tires) on and go.”
That’s certainly a contradiction in terms: he is good at racing in the rain but would prefer that things stay dry until the checkered flag.
“I just don’t enjoy it,” Gisbergen added. “It’s just never fun. You’re always sliding around and it just turns stuff into chaos. It’s fun to watch, but I don’t really enjoy driving (in it).”
